How to add columns in BigQuery to a table with no schema without deleting it's current labels in SQL?

Question

I run BQ jobs from a python code that first creates an empty table in BQ for the results with specific labels & description. later in the BQ SQL I insert the results into that empty table. The only problem is that I can't use ALTER to add columns to a table with no schema. I can't add the schema before because the SQL query is dynamically created by the Python code. The only way I found to solve this was to create the table with a column called 'x' and then remove it at the end of the SQL query.

Here is an idea of what the code looks like:

CREATE TEMP FUNCTION 
    ... very_complicated_function ...;

CREATE TEMP TABLE features AS    
    ... very_clever_code ...;


ALTER TABLE `table.created.by_python`
ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS key INT64,
ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS feature1 INT64;

ALTER TABLE `table.created.by_python` DROP COLUMN x;



INSERT INTO `table.created.by_python`
SELECT * except(nearest_centroids_distance)
  from 
    ML.PREDICT(MODEL `brilliant.genius.amazing`, 
                  (SELECT * FROM features)) M
    

The best possibility is just to insert the data into the empty table and let it create the schema itself if it doesn't exist.

Answer 1

You can add an empty column to an existing table by:

• Using the Cloud Console

• Using the bq command-line tool's bq update command

• Calling the tables.patch API method

• Using the ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN data definition language (DDL) statement.

• Using the client libraries.

Here's some python code that you can try to use and see if it helps in your case.

from google.cloud import bigquery
 
# Construct a BigQuery client object.
client = bigquery.Client()
 
# TODO(developer): Set table_id to the ID of the table
#                  to add an empty column.
# table_id = "your-project.your_dataset.your_table_name"
 
table = client.get_table(table_id)  # Make an API request.
 
original_schema = table.schema
new_schema = original_schema[:]  # Creates a copy of the schema.
new_schema.append(bigquery.SchemaField("phone", "STRING"))
 
table.schema = new_schema
table = client.update_table(table, ["schema"])  # Make an API request.
 
if len(table.schema) == len(original_schema) + 1 == len(new_schema):
    print("A new column has been added.")
else:
    print("The column has not been added.")

Also, here's some documentation that can help you to implement the new column into a table.